IT must not be separate from the rest of the company, but enmeshed in corporate strategy

For many CIOs, “alignment” is a dirty word. Though they’re often called on to align IT with business goals, inherent in that idea is that IT is separate from the rest of the company, according to Martha Heller, president of Heller Search Associates, a recruiting firm that focuses on technology executives. Top CIOs, on the other hand, run the IT group fully enmeshed in the core business of the company, helping to formulate strategy and bring in new customers.

In her latest book, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT, due out Sept. 27, Ms. Heller argues that chief information officers must not wait for a directive handed out by non-IT colleagues. Instead, CIOs should come up with ways to use technology, such as mobile apps, data analytics and Internet of Things, to create new business. One sure sign they’ve failed, she says, is the hiring of a chief digital officer. If that happens, she says, “you should question your own position in the executive suite.”

CIO Journal talked with Ms. Heller about how CIOs must change. Here are edited excerpts:

What has happened recently to change the role of the CIO?

Five years ago, we were just getting over a period of recession where there was a freeze on IT investment. But doing more with less is not tenable. Now we’re in a period of investment and reinvention. At the same time, technology now belongs to everyone. Mobile and cloud computing are, or can be, in everyone’s hands, so the operating model of IT needs to undergo change. It used to be that IT leaders said, “Leave it to us.” Now, the boundary between IT and the rest of organization is thoroughly blurred.

How can CIOs tear down that wall?

When a cloud vendor goes straight to the head of sales and strikes a deal, for a long time, CIOs called that “shadow IT.” In this new era, CIOs are revising that us-and-them relationship. They’ve renamed it “end-user innovation” and invited the rogues to develop or buy systems on their own, but using tools or vendors IT knows about. Another way to erase the wall is to put IT people in business groups, and recruit people from business lines into IT. Who better to convince the skeptics than someone who was once one of them?

Why is the arrival of a chief digital officer problematic?

When you as a CIO believe you’re in good standing and that you’ve delivered on what the CEO has asked of you and you’ve improved costs and productivity and you have a secure enterprise, and your CEO wants to hire a CDO, you should question your own position in the executive suite.

CEOs aren’t necessarily good at articulating what they want from IT. But they know problems when they see them. How can CIOs survive?

It’s an acute challenge. It is the CIO’s responsibility to create an environment where all executives together are thinking about how technology changes their business. The CIO needs to drive that. Bring in new vendors to demonstrate new technologies to your peers. Go to Silicon Valley with them to show them what’s possible. If a CIO won’t do that, he has no job left.